2004 Archives

Welcome 2005. May this year be a safe, joyous, peaceful, prosperous year.

Have a great year ahead.
-balaji

at the SV Temple, Pittsburgh and the last week snow at Morristown here. They should make their way to my gallery soon.

It was an awesome experience driving to MA yesterday. Either side of the road is pure white with snow. Amazing. A couple of more snaps of the snow at MA here.

<update>
Photos updated in my Gallery
</update>

Here, I come.

<he>: hey <me> :)
<me>: yo <XXX>
<me>: <XXX>: gonna get my lenses fixed, will be back shortly
<XXX>: spectacles or contact? :)
<me>: spex
<XXX>: or camera...
<XXX>: ah :)
<me>: <XXX>: need to clean my car, damn 2-3 inches snow
<me>: bbl
<XXX>: 2-3 inches should be nothing. Just ride away and let the tires take care of it. ;)
<me>: but the wind shield
<XXX>: why do you need to clean the wind shield?
<XXX>: Do you actually look into it while driving?
<XXX>: OMG
<me>: <XXX>: ??
<XXX>: nothing. :)
<me>: too mych IRCING or games?
<XXX>: lack of sleep, due to whichever reason. :)

Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun.
-- fortune

A movie about a guy who returns for a break from the US of A to his native town and the cultural shock he faces. Worth a watch. An afternoon better spent than having a nap.

There are some gems in the movie. Some of them...

12 years, and still one hour late.
Once a Hyderabadi, always a Hyderabadi

She is beautiful.
I hope you are not referring to my wife.

You will have to take your GRE and TOEFL.
Sandhya, without these exams no one ....
Call me Sandy!

One day a man was having a conversation with god when his whole life
flashed before his eyes as a series of footsteps on the sands of time.
He saw that there were two pairs of footprints, but during the most
difficult periods of his life there were only one set of footprints. He
asked god "You said you will be with me throughout this journey, but
why have you deserted me during the most critical times of my life??"
to which god answered "Son, I did not desert you, I was always with
you...you see only one set of footprints because during those difficult
times in your life, I was carrying you"

Our office is closed from Friday, December 24, 2004 till Sunday, January 2, 2005. This is the longest stretch of holidays I am having ever since i finished college. I don't have a plan on what to do and I am open to invitations. :-) I currently live in Morristown, NJ if that helps.

TCP	0.0.0.0:49201		0.0.0.0:0	LISTENING
TCP	0.0.0.0:49201		0.0.0.0:0	LISTENING
TCP	0.0.0.0:49203		0.0.0.0:0	LISTENING

I have seen that the most common spelling mistake I make is with words that have repetitive letters. For example, today when i was writing shooting, i wrote shotting. I have seen I make this mistake frequently.

What is the most common spelling mistake you make?

Watched Kakka Kakka and Main Hoon Na. Nothing impressive. KK is a good watch if you like Jyothika. She seems to have become slim and her looks are awesome. Other than the songs in Main Hoon Na, there is nothing much. In general, the movies are becoming pretty much predictable. I used to watch around 5-6 movies an year earlier and I used to enjoy every one. May be because, they were selected ones. I need to get back to selective viewing.

Need to watch After the Sunset and National Treasure. Sometime this week.

[uptate]
Bumped on this link about Bollywood movies accidentally. How true?
[/update]

Bought a Rio Carbon Digital Audio Player last week. Though the main interest was to rip apart the 5GB CF card, I thought I will use it as an audio player for sometime. I am trying to stuff music into it and I have just crossed a gig. I now know for sure that I don't need a 40GB iPod, if at all I buy one.

But her voice will stay for ever. Every time I used to pass by the "Subha - Sivam" house in Kotturpuram, I wish I could get to see her in person.
Music icon MS Subbulakshmi passes away

A colleague of mine just taught this! This is the third Japanese word i know after "moshi moshi" and "sayanora"

The title says it all. I go to sleep a satisfied man.

I was breaking my head for a couple of hours trying all possibilities till I discovered this cool link.

This is the third time I am saying this today. "There are always workarounds!" :-)

Watched Mujhse Dhosti Karoge yesterday. A dumb ass movie. The whole film runs on a hairline story. An overnight download and another two hours watching it. Total waste.

In other news, I have watched more movies in the last one month than the rest of the year. Movies watched recently

Ladder 49 - Story is about a firefighter recollecting his career, from a novice to one of the best. Nice movie. Jack Morrison does a good job. Worth watching.

White Chicks - A comedy movie. Doesn't impress much.

Taxi - A hilarous comedy. You should just watch it just for Jimmy Fallon's portrayal as loser and his stupidity at simple tasks opening a door, taking a car out of parallel parking. And these days, while driving I do sing aloud :-( The movie punch line "He is armed, She is dangerous". Full time pass, Paisa Vasool.

Ab Tak Chappan - Watched it just for Nana Patekar.

And i still have Kakka Kakka and Ennavale to watch. Torrents and a decent b/w rock!

Update: Just go to to know that Mujhse Dhosti Karoge was a 2002 candidate. I thought it was a 2004 release and was also a block buster. Must have messed mixed up with someother Hrithik Roshan film. And the Brazilian robbers in Taxi are hot! :-)

Having lived on junk food since yesterday afternoon, thought would cook rice and rasam for dinner. Screwed it up. Rasam was too much hot, spicy and salty. On a normal day, if it was my mom or my cook, would have made a big hue and cry about. I had to to eat it, with no one to holler out. Some times, life comes in circle. You live with it. :-(

Listening to a partially downloaded mp3 via torrent is fun. Ever tried it?

Fedora Core 3, code named Heidelberg is out. I have started the download thru BitTorrent. I should be ready to install it on my laptop over the weekend. The download speed is pretty decent. Another 15 more hours to go.

Also, I am getting Debian installed on another box for R&D. Next couple of weeks is going to be fun, if the workload does not peak out.

PS: Heidelberg - Where do they get these names. Google didn't help. I did see a note about Tettnang but unable to locate it now

Late Night With Conan O-Brien-IT Support

In case the file disappears, here is a link to the story.

After months of struggle, I have got Vmware workstation up and running. All I needed to do was to read the documentation with a cool head. I have a dual boot Windows XP and FC2. I can now boot FC2 as guest OS under Windows XP. A bit slow but is cool. You can see a screenshot of X-Chat and Ayttm running under Gnome on FC2. Am not sure what I am going to do with this now. It will be great if I get a license for a Linux host.

I have tried it a few times and failed but atlast today, I have managed to get the Netgear MA521 WLAN Card configured and working under FC2, using ndiswrapper. I will try to document this or atleast point to the links I used to get here.

W00t!

News Article here

Have been planning to buy a Digital Camera for long. Just saw this offer from CompUSA. Am planning to buy one this week.
Comments, Suggestions, Inputs welcome.

Parthiban's recent movie is "Kudaikul Mazhai". He is one guy who tries to experiment with his movies and some of his movies are gems. The songs for this movie are scored by Karthik Raja. The song titled "Adiye Kiliye" sung by Ilayaraja is awesome. The music sounds very much like vintage Ilayaraja. Its been playing on my laptop since this morning. Looking forward to watching this movie.

Was reading Sandeep's Techbook when I stumbled on this link. A website for Koramangala. And this site seems to have been around for five years. And has been featured on Wired and a TV in europe. So much for a place in Bangalore. But still it does not have Bangalore's most happening place on its map.

Was coming back from office 15 minutes back when I noticed a few deer's on the road side. Wish I had a camera to capture them.

PS: If you are wondering what I am doing in office on a Sunday night, thats a different story.

uptime
06:44PM up 6487 days, 18:33, 3 users, load average: 282.86, 293.57, 212.82

Processor Type: PowerPC_604e Number Of Processors: 1 Processor Clock Speed: 375 MHz CPU Type: 32-bit Kernel Type: 32-bit Memory Size: 1024 MB Good Memory Size: 1024 MB Firmware Version: IBM,TCP02007

WTF? This machine is screwed up. I cant believe that a machine can run without a power recycle for 17 years. And the machine seems to be a recent one.

Okay, now I have a Chevrolet Imapala. Haven't yet done the customary of taking a photo and putting it on the web. Should be doing it soon. Work has been hectic but I plan to venture out shortly

You try to sleep, and think ... "telnet xxx.dreams.heaven"

When you dream in 256 pallettes of 256 colors.

When asked about a bus schedule, you wonder if it is 16 or 32 bits.

When your wife says "If you don't turn off that darn machine and come to bed, then I am going to divorce you!", and you chastise her for for omitting the else clause.

When you are reading a book and look for the space bar to get to the next page.

When you look for your car keys using: "grep keys /dev/pockets"

When you look for your homework using: "grep homework /dev/backpack"

When not only do you check your email more often than your paper mail, but you remember your network address faster than your postal one.

One of our web hosting folks calls me his "Favourite Pest". Any outgoing call's from our office goes with a specific number. And the moment he sees this number, he tells "Hi Balaji". My boss stopped by yesterday to say that she called this tech and the moment he picked up the phone said "Hi Balaji". She was baffled.

I am a pest, but not always!

Every problem is simple, once you know the solution.
-- Balaji, October 2004

Sometime back Ravi had suggested trying Reliance India Call for long distance calling from USA to India. I found this in their customer service agreement on their site.

4. Consent to E-Mail Communications. By entering into this Agreement, you consent to the receipt of e-mails from Reliance IndiaCall. In addition to sending you e-mail notifications as provided for above, we may also send you e-mails about other products and services we believe may be of interest to you. You may opt-out of future e-mails about products or services by contacting us either by e-mail at unsubscribe@relianceindiacall.com or by calling us at 1-888-6-RELIANCE (1-888-673-5426). We reserve the right, however, to continue to e-mail you important information relating to your Account, this Agreement or the Services in which you are enrolled.

Not sure if this true these days but for sure was a couple of years back during the Boom days

I got a promotion mailer today and the disclaimer had this note

You are receiving this email as information regarding our products and services. You may, at any time, choose not to receive email marketing literature / information about our products and services by [clicking here] to unsubscribe. We will delete your email address from our mailing list without charge.

Without charge, heh?

When I tried clicking the link providede to unsubscribe and enter my email address, it says

Please enter a valid Email address

I am going to email their customer support and see their response.

Somehow when I was here last time, I didnt enjoy the canteen food. Since then I have started cooking. Cooking is fun. And I have another friend who enjoys cooking too. We have tried Sambar, Pepper Rasam, Rava Dosai, Wheat Dosai, Palak, Fried Rice and Pulav. Today it is Vermicilli.

You feel happy when others compliment after tasting your food. And this entry has nothing to do with this post.

From one of those forwards:

Slow but Happy

It's the 1970s, and this pilot fish writes the first online application for his company's mainframe. It's blazingly fast, but boss tells fish, "Put a loop in that does nothing 10,000 times before displaying the response screen." Why slow it down? fish asks. "Because as more applications go online, response time will get longer and longer, and the users will get more and more irritated," his boss tells him. "This way, we can just decrease the number of times the empty loop executes, keep response time constant and keep the users happy."

After ages, i visited Times of India site and this is what i get. A public site asking for a password. A mis-configured web server, a clueless sys ad? WTF?

http://www.flashtoons.org/movies/movie51.swf

# uptime
4:11pm up 312 day(s), 23:06, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.02

# uptime
4:12pm up 312 day(s), 23:07, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.02


Am unable to figure out a way to send plain text calendar invites using Outlook 2003. Is there an option?

No Need to Click Here - I'm just claiming my feed at Feedster

To see a live demo or understand better Darwin's Survival of the Fittest theory, try driving on Bannerghatta road between 08:30 and 10:00 after a rainy day!

From one of those forwarded mails:

Difference between Focus on Problems, and Focus on Solutions

One of the most memorable case studies I came across on Japanese management was the case of the empty soap box, which happened in one of Japan's biggest cosmetics companies. The company received a complaint that a consumer had bought a soap box that was empty. Immediately the authorities isolated the problem to the assembly line, which transported all the packaged boxes of soap to the delivery department.

For some reason, one soap box went through the assembly line empty. Management asked its engineers to solve the problem. Post-haste, the engineers worked hard to devise an X-ray machine with high-resolution monitors manned by two people to watch all the soap boxes that passed through the line to make sure they were not empty. No doubt, they worked hard and they worked fast but they spent whoopee amount to do so.

But when a rank-and-file employee in a small company was posed with the same problem, did not get into complications of X-rays, etc but instead came out with another solution. He bought a strong industrial electric fan and pointed it at the assembly line. He switched the fan on, and as each soap box passed the fan, it simply blew the empty boxes out of the line.

Only on one server, ssh public key authorisation was failing. Its been like this for months together and I could never figure out the issue, until I saw this today.

ls *keys*
authriozed_keys

Do you use MS Outlook 2003 and hate those fancy coloured html / rich text mails. If you want to convert them to plain text automagically, enable this option.

Tools -> Options -> Email Options
and Select "Read all standard mail in plain text".

PS: Don't spam me with comments asking why Outlook? One of those corporate nuances.

When making your choice in life, do not neglect to live.
-- Samuel Johnson

Thanks to a friend of mine, I got to watch SM-2 yesterday. Little bit of sentiment, some SciFI and some SFX. Nice movie for kids. Nothing more.

If SM-2 is re-made in Tamil, Vijayakanth will act as Peter Parker.

[update]
Of course, this was the best scene in the movie.
[/update]

SwitchProxy Tool extension for Firefox.

For all who need to switch proxies between office and home.

5 important tips to keep it Assaliscious. ROTFLMCAO

M.K.Space Vision provides Cable TV for us. I have been trying to watch the ongoing India - Srilanka cricket match and the service is crappy. And in between, a message pops-up covering most of the screen saying "This signal is being stolen and liable for action under the copyright act". There is also a ticker running, which says "You are watching Ice TV signal from Rajajinagar". Tried calling up both Ice TV and M.K. Space Vision but both the numbers are engaged.

Crap! You need to live with it. This month's Cable TV payment cut.

YALJM? Yet Another LJ Meet.

Tahir sms'ed me around noon yesterday asking about plans for lunch. We decided to meet up at Koshy's. Called up Nerdy and Dhempe. Dhempe came with his friend and roped in Marvin and his friend. A few pics here.

Dhempe -> Sorry, some of the pics you took havent come out good. So censored.

This is a beauty.

<snip>
This Advertisement for the new Honda Accord was shot in real time with no CGI involved in the sequence. It required 606 takes and cost $6 million to shoot.
</snip>

Note: Requires flash
Note 2: This was written yesterday and never got posted. dhempe says this very old.

Copy + Pasting to save a few keyboard tapes types sometimes could be disastrous. I have changed it before someone pointing out. Hopefully no-one ever noticed.

This is cool.

'use' and 'show' will soon be forgotten.

Since the rain has kept me indoors, watched the British GP. Yet another victory for Schumacher, though Kimi gave some fight. It has become a ritual now to see Schumi on the podium, irrespective of his position on the qualifying.

Pictures from yesterdays meet are here. Turned out to be a geek meet with flashy bluetooth devices and everyone looking for Mike-yo.

I bumped into this make shift IBM road side showroom yesterday. Was baffled to see the pamphlet. He had two ThinkCentre Models with Red Hat Linux as the OS. Any guesses for the third? DOS. Unfortunately the chap was unable to tell which version of DOS and asked me to contact his boss. Click on the pic.

echo "GET /" | openssl s_client -connect [ip]:443

I have a dual boot Windows XP / FC2 and am struggling to get VMware 4.5 run FC2 as a guest under Windows XP. Have RTFMed and STFWed but haven't got a clue it. Whenever i try to edit the HDD after configuring it as a raw partition it gives this error.

Failed to retrieve disk information for "D:\Balaji\E198183\My Documents\My Virtual Machines\Red Hat Linux\Red Hat Linux.vmdk":
The partition table on the physical disk has changed since the disk was created.Remove the physical disk from the virtual machine then add it again.

Any clues?

Note: This was written yesterday night but never got posted

After weeks together, I am home at a sane time. Don't remember when I last reached home before a midnight.

Pictures of Saturday's meet with Aivalli, Premshree and Yazad Jal are here. And my new userpic on LJ comes from one of those.

Just finished reading "The Firm" by John Grisham. A fantastic thriller. Couldn't put it down once i crossed 200 pages odd. Glad that its over, i can go and get some sleep.

You have an open mind. But would you close it sometime for repairs!
-- Courtesy Yazad

Installed MTCloseComments on my blog atlast. Have been bugged by fscking spammers in the last couple of days.

And am off to catch up with Alan, Sandeep, Nerdy and Premshree around MG Road. If interested, contact any one of us.

This has been taking quite a bit of my free time these days. I saw the Rubik's Cube first, when I was in school. I could solve no more than a single side and thought that that was the best that could be done. Until when in college, a friend could solve this with ease. While solving the cube, after solving the two opposite sides, he would solve the rest without having a look at the cube. It used to fascinate me a lot until he explained the whole idea. He could also tell if the cube was assembled incorrectly after a certain amount of moves. I picked up the tricks from him then but have forgotten / out of touch. Have been taking close to twenty minutes to solve it. Will try to improve and learn some new tricks.

send me an email. first come first served.

All beautiful woman in this world are either lesbians or married.

Found written in our office toilets

- Please stand / sit closer to the WC throughout the performance.
- Even if you are in a rush, please remember to flush
- If you sprinkle while to tinkle, be a sweetie and wipe the seatie

:-)

Yes! My new browser!

http://www.cosmicat.com/extensions/firesomething/

If any one wants holler.

100MB from yahoo mail. yeah!

Dhoti + Shirt for my Father = Rs. 700
Two Sarees for my Mom = Rs. 1891
Two Salwar Kameez for my Sister = Rs. 1735
A jean and a Kurtha for me = Rs. 2400

This is a not a Master card advt. I am wondering if men's clothing has gone so costly?

Gmail! Yeah! at last,. thanks to Niteesh.

Walked from home to office in 25 minutes today. Guess the 1000 bucks i spent on the laptop bag is worth it!

Some junk to read. Better than head banging.

Cowism:-

Advaniism

You have two cows. You dont milk them. You worship them.

Chandrababuism

You have two cows in Vijayawada. You hook them to internet and milk them from Hyderabad.

Jayalalithaism

You have two cows. You teach them to cry, "Ammaaaaaaa..." and fall at your feet.

Karunanidhiism

You have two cows. You give one to your son and the other to your nephew.

Gandhism

You have two cows. But you drink goat's milk.

Indiraism

you have two bulls. You adamantly consider them as cows.

Lalooism

You have two cows. You buy Rs. 900 Crore worth of cattlefeed for them.

Rajnikantism

You have two cows. You throw them into air and catch their milk in your mouth.

Rajivism

You have two cows. You paint them both to get colourful milk.

Vajpayeeism

You have two cows. You distribute the milk among your partners and eat cattlefeed.

Clintonism

You have two cows. But you milk your neigh! bours' cows.

Talibanism

You have two cows. You put them in purdah.

UN-ism

You have two cows. You dont milk them; you only lecture to them.

Softwarism:

1 First prepare a document when to milk them (Project kick off)

2 Prepare a document how long you have to milk them (Project plan)

3 Then prepare how to milk them (Design)

4 Then prepare what other accessories are needed to milk them (Framework)

5 Then prepare a 2 dummy cows (sort of toy cows) and show to client the way in which u will milk them (UI Mockups & POC)

6 If client is not satisfied then redo from step 2

7 You actually start milking them and find that there are few problem with accessories. (Change framework)

8 Redo step 4

9 At last milk them and send it to onsite. (Coding over)

10 Make sure that cow milks properly ( Testing)

11. O! nsite reports that it is not milking there.

13. You break your head and find that onsite is trying to milk from bulls

14. At last onsite milk them and send to client (Testing)

15. Client says the quality of milk is not good. (User Acceptance Test)

16. Offsite then slogs and improves the quality of milk

17. Now the client says that the quality is good but its milking at slow rate (performance issue)

18. Again you slog and send it with good performance.

19. Client is happy..

By this time both the COWs aged and cant milk.

When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him whose.
-- Don Marquis

Indian food, road side panipuri / chat, idly vada / samabar. ...... here i come....

No this is not yet another remark about Sonia in the race for the PM or backing out due to her inner voice and conscience.

I was discussing this post by Sohnipreet with a friend of mine. The point of discussion was why NRI's were making a hue and cry about Sonia becoming the PM. He had an opinion. Indians who live outside might have faced a lot of hardship / indifference from the local countrymen. When they compare that with a foreigner become the PM of their country, they feel that is unacceptable. The normal illiterate Indian might not be aware of this feeling.

Interesting insight from a person who has lived outside India for close to ten years.

When Alan told this , couldnt believe it could happen. But... Vaibhav had to meet someone in Parsippany last Sunday and he dropped down to the hotel to meet me. Had a chat discussing work, Linux, LJ, and some unrelated stuff for sometime.

On Saturday, I was hanging around on #linux-india at freenode and bumped into a whole lot of familiar names including Vaibhav.

This world is small.....

I have got FC2. Approx 2.1GB via the torrent took less than 12 hours. I will try to burn it to a CD and if possible install it on my laptop tongiht. Kewl!

And the power of broadband is amazing.

cleaning somebody else's shit. But end up doing it most of the time!

There is one fscking spammer with jay@hotmail.com (http://freeporn.pinkzoo.com/) from various ip's including (212.88.95.217, 64.159.65.78) spamming my site. Banning the IP is of no use since he seems to come from different ip.
Am not sure if its worth the trouble of setting up a spam filter. Bloody irritating!

Did anyone notice this? Or is it old news. I just read this.

[snipped from the Ximian Connector Home page]
Effective immediately, Evolution Connector for Microsoft Exchange Server 2000/2003 (formerly Ximian Connector) is available under a free, open source license. Users no longer need a license file to run the software, and source code has been made public at http://ftp.ximian.com under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

More Here.

Hmmm.... Let me check it out.

[update]
Here is the press release.
[/update]

Some of the pics are here. Comments please!

Its kind of weird with the weather here. It was sunny in the morning yesterday, scorching at noon. And at night it started to rain with lightning. Last week, it was a pleasant evening when we decided to stroll on the Brooklyn bridge. But slowly the temperature started to drip down. It went down to around 10 degrees (celsius) and the windchill was killing us. On a single day, such a subtle variation!

create your own visited country map
or write about it on the open travel guide

Was browsing through rediff, when i read this article about "Farah Khan gets Tony nomination". Bombay dreams is playing currently in Broadway and yesterday when we were roaming around Newyork, we found the theatre where it was running. There were clippings being played featuring ARR, Farah Khan, Webber, Shekar Kapur. Do you know what are the tickets for the show? It ranges from $91 to $110. On Wednesdays, there is a show for $45.

Simply Superb!

Am damn tired roaming around the streets of Manhattan over the past two days. Need to get some good sleep, ahead of some tough schedules (when does this change) this week.

Good night!

Hmmm.... In the last three hours, listening to songs on Y! Launchcast radio and working (!), my connection stats shows this.

Bytes in: 4898075
Bytes out: 8393701
Frames in: 81480
Frames out: 70852

Compare this with the 500MB cap I have at home with DIAS. :-(

So, what have I been doing? Its almost two weeks since i came to Morristown, NJ. Had a nice flight and landed on a rainy day at Newark. Was a hectic week and other than office didn't venture out. Saturday moved to a better hotel, Summerfield Suites and nearer to Office. And the best part of it is that, this Hotel has a broad band connection free!

Went to the local mall on Saturday looking out for a camera. Me and a friend of mine decided to walk back for a mile and would have been run over at a signal. Man, these people here drive too fast and there is no one walking around on the road. You hardly see any people on the road!

On Sunday, had been to New York. Yes, to Manhattan. An amazing place. Will save the story for another entry. For now, i have started to upload pictures. Catch them all here.

USA - April / May 2004

And yes, am off to NYC tomorrow too!

I am alive. Was not feeling well for over a week, due to sever mouth ulcers. Wasn't able to eat / speak for close to a week. Am better now, and another good news. I am travelling to Morristown, NJ, for a couple of weeks this week. This is my first trip to the US and my second overseas trip. Looking forward to it. More later.

And, the fact is April is _good_, though there were minor hiccups in between.

April _is_ good. I got a hike yesterday.

Its April already. Overall March has been good.

I got this comment today on my MT blog.

IP Address: 203.132.226.226
Name: penis enlargement
Email Address: amelie@hotmail.com
URL: http://www.pro-penis-enlargement.com
Subject:
Comments:
My boyfriend has tried them and he's a new person since than.The confidence..., the courage!

I will be in sync with the rest of the world around me from tomorrow (atleast for some time). Its been a long month.

Seems i wont get a sleep if i dont rant these days. So here is the Rant of the day.

When i try to scp from a AIX box to a linux, i get this error.

scp blah:/blah blah
ksh: scp: not found.

scp is installed in /usr/local, its in the path. Googled and discovered that many have faced this error and the solution is to link from the /usr/bin. Unfortunately, i am not root and this cant but done. Thankfully, sftp works!

I have been a happy user of the lj-crosspost plugin for quite some time. Lately its been behaving erratic. I am not sure, though nothing has been changed on the MT side. Chip has already posted an entry about the wishlist for the next version. Till then i am planning to write a script to sync these entries on a periodic basis via cron.

Any pointers?

Ok, i wanted to post a detailed one but its getting late and better do it now than never.

Over the last couple of weeks or so, I have met a whole lot of people from LJ. Its been a fantastic experience meeting them. Nice meeting you all and it has been fun. I have been having a great time, especially the last couple of weekends.

Dhempe, a special thanks to you. It all started with you calling me the other day to Garam Masala.

Got this just now. Mostly due to badly formatted html from jwz's post

My Hutch phone has been out of network for the past fifteen minutes. Managed to get the Hutch helpline on my landline. When i asked them "My phone is out of n/w. Is there an issue". They respond "Sir! We are upgrading our servers in Bangalore. Everything will be working in the next 2-3 hours!"

Wtf? In this age, how can one afford a down time of three hours. And that too, planned. Do they have a clue about high availability?

I don't mind people forgetting the rest of the world while on phone. But doing that on a road assuming the whole road as their own is unpardonable.

Seems my sync between my MT and LJ is screwed up. Atleast two people have now said that they are not able to see my posts on their LJ friends page.

Does this one work? If not, i am clueless.

One last post, actually a question before i hit the sack. This after talking today to Mannu and Denzil.

If I ask you to recomend three blogs to read, whom will you recommend?

I don't mind arguing with myself. It's when I lose that it bothers me.
-- Richard Powers

I have hardly watched any of the matches in the on-going series. Somehow, I feel that these matches have been fixed. Otherwise, how could you see all these matches such a high scoring, closely contested event.

Today, i knew India will win. Normally when India loses the top four, i start worrying even if it is an easily achievable target. Today, in spite of India being 150 odd for the loss of five wickets, i knew INDIA WILL WIN. Else, how else will there be crowd for the final match and how will the sponsors get their money.

Anyone arguing otherwise?

Cutting Vegetables is an art. Most of all you need patience. Somehow, i have never managed to learn the art of slicing onions.

Yes, i am hungry and just managed to cook some noodles for me.

Why is that after every song, the volume goes to the maximum while listening to Raga Jukebox. Is there a setting i am missing?

Btw, thanks to Dhempe, i am hooked on to Main Hoon Na. That song keeps running always on my box.

PS: My journal and real life are not in sync. So expect a few posts about the last couple of weeks over the weekend. :-)

Got a whole bunch of Jesudass Tamil film songs. Listening to Jesudass and working is pure bliss.

Some food for thought.

http://in.rediff.com/money/2004/mar/03guest1.htm

:-(

Tried using Firefox to connect to the Citibank Internet banking site and it works like a charm. But HSBC still complains

To access online@hsbc, please use:
* Internet Explorer version 5.0 or above; or
o Netscape Communicator version 4.72 or above (version 6.x currently not supported)

Tried the User Agent Switcher plugin to change the User Agent as IE but still no help. Any comments / suggestions?

I almost lost my mobile. I was so careless that i left it in the cab and came home. And i didn't want to be disturbed today and had put my mobile in silent mode. Thankfully the folks at Chandru travels discovered it and just returned it back. God saved me. I cant suffer another hear heart attack.

*me goes to sleep peacefully*

What a hectic week it has been? The earliest i reached home was on Friday night at 0000hrs. During the start of the week i decided that i am going to reduce my food intake and ended up eating more junk food. :-( The only time i ate staple food was on Friday when i gulped in some good amount of Aloo Parathas from Tasty Bites. Saturday was spent sleeping as usual. Also tried to get the USB modem provided by Touchtel working on Linux in vain. Anyone here using the Bharathi Tocuhtel connection on Linux?

On Sunday, Vinod and Hemant, who worked at Wipro when i was in Hyderabad had come down to Bangalore and we decided to catch up near K2 (Wipro's office opposite to the park at Koramangala.) Had a nice time talking about those good days. And after a long time, i had my favourite Devils Own at Coffee Day. Meanwhile Harish called telling that the LJ meet was on. Appaji was interested about the meet but had some other commitments and couldn't make it. I joined the folks at Barista by 1830 and they were already having a great time. General chit-chat followed by a walk down the Brigade Road to Corner house for ice-cream, thanks to Shradha.

And i met this fantastic person, Alan. What a lovely person with his timing jokes. Savio was fondly remembered for his train journey experiences.

Overall, a great way to end up a screwed up week.

More here.

Orkut invites which i sent almost a week back got delivered today. Apparently, its not only me who is having this problem.

Somebody stop these jokers. Apart from littering the walls with their posters and slogans(do they do that now?), these jokers are planning for SMS spam.

Manish, you are better off without your cellphone.

Its final now. The itinerary is out. India will play five one-dayers and three tests between March 10 and April 18. This will be one of the most watched test series, thanks to the political imbroglio between India and Pakistan. India relies a lot on its batting prowess and Pakistan has a great bowling line up. Also there is lots of interest generated due to the fact that these teams are playing in Pakistan after a long time(13 years?). TV Broadcasting rights has been sold out.

As Pratyush points out, it shouldn't matter who wins. It should be taken as a confidence / peace building measure. Though i have my doubts, I wish both the team all success and hope to the enjoy this toughly contested series.

Ref: Indian cricket team to head for Pakistan on March 10

I have spent the last six hours or so online. Chatting with friends / a couple of my cousins whom i havent spoken for years together, browsing, LJ'ing, ...

I have some problem with the power extension board and its not working properly. So, my DIAS modem is in the bathroom connected to the heater power socket and a hanging network cable comes out. Looks funny.

Need to get an electrician tomorrow morning to get it fixed first. And off to sleep now.

-balaji

ps: There was this show on Sun TV where cine artists performed somewhere in Singapore. Arjun sang "Malare! Mounama!" from the film Karna, orginally by SPB. Was fantastic.

Atlast i have DIAS at home. The guys from BSNL today came in the afternoon and set it up. All they did was to connect a modem to the telephone line and connect the telephone / LAN cable to it. They gave me a 10 series IP and I am on the net. The whole process took less than half an hour. In all, the whole process of getting the connection took me close to four hours. But i wasted almost an hour at the SBI, JP Nagar getting my DD, thanks to a dumb headed manager who did everything else other than signing those DD's which were lying on his table.

Now i have some questions which needs to be cleared. Need to check with fox2mike or nerdy.

Let me relax now and enjoy the always on connection. :-)

Eric Allman rants about spam in an article titled "The Economics of Spam" He says "How does this work in the real world? Well, sellers try to maximize profits by maximizing price and minimizing expense. Advertising is an expense, so keeping this cheap is a good thing. And there's the rub." and goes on to say that e-postage / challenge-response systems need to be implemented to increase the cost to the sender.

Else where, Bill Gates revealed his 'magic solution' to spam and Yahoo announces its innovative solution about the problem.

The amount of spam I receive these days is shooting up. Sometime back I read on Manish's journal that the Nigerian spammers have been caught. But still I receive them in addition to mail delivery failures for mails faked as sent from my domain. Around 25% of mails I receive at my domain and around 90% of mails I receive at my yahoo account is spam.

God save me.

Watched LOTR - TROTK yesterday at Symphony. Enjoyed the movie though i slept for sometime in between. :-) Also, i felt the movie was stretched a bit too long. It was a little over three hours i guess.

Other updates: Went to the BSNL customer care yesterday hoping to get my DIAS connection but was closed yesterday. Will need to get that done tomorrow.

As Manish points out, its Orkut Day today. Thanks to Vikrant, I joined Orkut.

dmesg was displaying message "ACPI: Interpreter disabled." there was no /proc/acpi directory and when i tried starting acpid, it was erroring out "cant find /proc/acpi/events". After a bit of fiddling and googling found that i need to pass the "acpi=on" option to the kernel to get ACPI working. And now poweroff command / the power button gives a clean shutdown. Need to check speedstep/cpufreq.

I need a break!

Ever mis-typed sl instead of ls on a Debian GNU/Linux box. Did that and was baffled to see a nice ASCII art on the screen.

Check it out if you have a Debian box around.

$ apt-cache show sl
Package: sl
Priority: optional
Section: games
Installed-Size: 70
Maintainer: Kenshi Muto
Architecture: i386
Version: 3.03-13
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.3.1-1), libncurses5 (>= 5.3.20021109-1)
Filename: pool/main/s/sl/sl_3.03-13_i386.deb
Size: 13804
MD5sum: 7cce44dbc0824d4ab97bc86f088524da
Description: Correct you if you type `sl' by mistake
.
Sl is a program that can display animations aimed to correct you
if you type 'sl' by mistake.

If its not Adam Gilchrist or Ricky Ponting, it is Mathew Hayden and Andrew Symonds. The ball has seen all corners of SCG. Indian's have been intimidated by the hard hitting Australians. Last ten overs produced 110 runs.

359/5 in 50 overs.India needs 360 to win. Same target as in the World Cup finals and its gonna be a repeat of that match. India is going to crumble under pressure.

Now guys. Go and get some sleep or do something useful. And dont tell that this is the best Indian team and has the strength to upset number 1 Australia. The whole world will laugh at you!

Found this in my web server access log.

213.52.200.140 - - [05/Feb/2004:12:58:26 -0800] "GET /cgi-bin/formmail.pl HTTP/1.0" 404 213 "http://www.balajin.net/" "-" 213.52.200.140 - - [05/Feb/2004:12:58:27 -0800] "GET /cgi-bin/formmail.cgi HTTP/1.0" 404 214 "http://www.balajin.net/" "-" 213.52.200.140 - - [05/Feb/2004:12:58:28 -0800] "GET /cgi-bin/FormMail.pl HTTP/1.0" 404 213 "http://www.balajin.net/" "-" 213.52.200.140 - - [05/Feb/2004:12:58:28 -0800] "GET /cgi-bin/FormMail.cgi HTTP/1.0" 404 214 "http://www.balajin.net/" "-" 213.52.200.140 - - [05/Feb/2004:12:58:29 -0800] "GET /cgi-sys/formmail.pl HTTP/1.0" 404 213 "http://www.balajin.net/" "-" 213.52.200.140 - - [05/Feb/2004:12:58:30 -0800] "GET /cgi-sys/formmail.cgi HTTP/1.0" 404 214 "http://www.balajin.net/" "-" 213.52.200.140 - - [05/Feb/2004:12:58:30 -0800] "GET /cgi-sys/FormMail.pl HTTP/1.0" 404 213 "http://www.balajin.net/" "-" 213.52.200.140 - - [05/Feb/2004:12:58:31 -0800] "GET /cgi-bin/Formmail.pl HTTP/1.0" 404 213 "http://www.balajin.net/" "-" 213.52.200.140 - - [05/Feb/2004:12:58:31 -0800] "GET /cgi-bin/mail.pl HTTP/1.0" 404 209 "http://www.balajin.net/" "-" 213.52.200.140 - - [05/Feb/2004:12:58:32 -0800] "GET /cgi-bin/FORMMAIL.PL HTTP/1.0" 404 213 "http://www.balajin.net/" "-"

Read this why? And the source IP is from UK.

$ whois 213.52.200.140 % This is the RIPE Whois server. % The objects are in RPSL format. % % Rights restricted by copyright. % See http://www.ripe.net/ripencc/pub-services/db/copyright.html

inetnum: 213.52.200.128 - 213.52.200.255
netname: GL-LLGH-HACKNEYEDUCATIONDEPT
descr: London Borough of Hackney
country: GB
admin-c: JV402-RIPE
tech-c: JV402-RIPE
status: ASSIGNED PA
mnt-by: GBIX-RIPE-MNT
changed: ppaul@globix.net 20020318
source: RIPE

route: 213.52.192.0/20
descr: Globix
origin: AS4513
notify: radb@globix.net
mnt-by: GBIX-RIPE-MNT
changed: cliendo@globix.net 20020110
source: RIPE

person: Julian Vennis
address: London Borough of Hackney
address: Edith Cavell Building
address: Enfield Road
address: London
address: N1 5BA
address: UK
phone: +44 20 8356 7556
fax-no: +44 20 8356 7235
e-mail: jvennis@hackney.gov.uk
nic-hdl: JV402-RIPE
mnt-by: GBIX-RIPE-MNT
changed: ppaul@globix.net 20020318
source: RIPE

Comments?

After a blissful long weekend, you get fscked royally in the morning traffic. Shit! What a way to start the week.

Anyhow, Its going to be a short week for me. I am travelling to Tanjavore tonight for a friends marriage and will be back on Thursday.

//--------------------------------------
// This file is global. (i.e., it
// exists in one place on the webserver)
//--------------------------------------

The Bannerghata Road stretch till IIM is getting worse day by day. Thanks to the flyover being built at the BTM junction, half the road has disappeared due to the heavy traffic. The other half is full of potholes and driving has become a duanting task. During the day, its heavy traffic that takes almost fifteen minutes to cover a distance of less than one KM. In the night its the speeding Quallis and Sumo (from Accenture / HSBC ?) which sends a chill down your spine. Add to that, the road is being dug on one side.

There was a film shoot last week in one of the local Manhattan's. There was a huge crowd to watch the shoot and make-shift candy / ice-cream parlours popped up creating utter confusion. Yesterday there was a marriage at the Kalyani Kalyana Mandapa and the entire road was jammed.

Somebody told, "This road is being converted into a four lane highway". Prompty my friend responded "By that time, your son will be working here, then!". God only knows when will this mess come to an end. *Sigh*

Want to find the birthday of your friends on Livejournal. Here is a script which fetches and displays the info from LJ. It uses the HTTP::Lite perl module.

Its self explanatory.

Comments welcome.
http://balajin.net/download/getbday.pl

What a match? An absolute cracker. Unfortunately couldnt watch the match. Thanks to cricinfo, got to know the scores atleast.

I was telling everyone that it was Bret Lee who helped us win the last month. But he is today's hero enacting the Javed Miandad story. Hmm... Could n't help laughing when I read this.

"Australia have Lee, Gilchrist and Patel to thank for their victory. Ganguly will be a dejected man; no one likes to lose after coming so close."

Its high time that Parthiv learns wicket keeping.

The forthcoming India - Pakistan series will create records for ad revenue, it seems. According to Economic times, the going rate is $30,000 for a slot of 30 secs. Samsung and Bajaj are the lead sponsors for the five one day and three test series.

Some time back , an article on The Hindu Business Line quoted, the media sponsors Bajaj and Samsung, and associates Hutch, GlaxoSmithKline, Maruti, LG, Pepsi and Hero Cycles have lapped up their entire quota of airtime for an amount estimated at Rs 80 crore. And that time the expected rate was $7,000 per 30 second slot.

Just for the records, the rate for a 30 second slot during the world cup was around $10,000.

Its all about money, Honey!

Sometime, I wonder how indifferent I become on weekends. I have spent more than 20 hours of the past two days sleeping. I know weekends are for unwinding, but I guess this is too much. How much do you normally sleep on weekends?

Only good thing I did was to do some cleanup and in the process found my video library membership. Promptly went to the video shop and got Mr. and Mrs. Iyer. (that was the CD lying prominently in the front). Nice movie and well enacted by Rahul Bose and Konkona Sen. Though initial the Tamil accent of Meenakshi sounds a bit odd, she has done a nice job. Shot in nice location with some captivating music by Zakir Hussain, its a nice watch. And blame me for missing this movie so long.

Have been facing funny issues with Yahoo! Messenger since evening. When i try to login, it says "You have been disconnected as you have logged in from another machine". I see that Y! has not connected and i am offline. But i am able to receive messages from my friends.

Weird! But sometimes software are :-)

A great cricketing career comes to an end. I remember Steve Waugh as a part of the team which had the likes of David Boon, my favourite cricketer during school, Geoff Marsh, Dean Jones, Allan Border, et al. I was in school then. From then to now, he has transformed to captain of the number one cricket team with a lot of records.

What a day it was for him. Standing ovation when he came in to bat, Every run being cheered, the fifty and then when he got out! The whole stadium gave him another standing ovation and cheered him up. Tendulkar after taking the catch came running to congratulate Steve.

Sachin said "I looked up to Steve Waugh and as a young man learnt a lot from him". Dravid said "I am delighted to play my part in the memorable test". Earlier Laxman dedicated his century to Steve. Ganguly congratulating Steve Waugh after accepting the trophy. Then came the moment. Steve Waugh's speech after accepting the token gift. I was thinking if he was allowed to speak a few more works, he would have cried. He finished saying "I want to get back to the dressing room and drink a few beers". The Australians then carried Waugh through a lap of honour.

We will miss you Waugh!

Australia thrashes India 2-0.

How many of us were expecting a similar result when India went to Australia last month. I was thinking that Australia will beat India 2-0 (may be an innings defeat as well). Indians have played remarkable cricket in this series and have given Australia enough nightmares with the 1-1 result and retaining the Border-Gavaskar trophy.

It was a bit weird that Rahul Dravid was awarded of the Man of the Series instead of Ricky Ponting. Ricky Ponting had scored above 700 runs with back to back double centuries and I though he deserved the Man of the Series. Kumble was forgotten and Sachin Tendulkar was awarded the Man of the Match.

Every batsmen contributed though bowling was average. The bowling department needs a lot of improvement and consistency. Also, Parthiv Patel needs to learn a lot. Instead of over-appealing, he might well concentrate on his wicket keeping. He missed a few crucial chances which could have turned the match.

We have also moved up to the fifth place in the test rankings. Now let us hope Indians do well in the VB Series as well.

Sitting in office alone and spent some time thinking. Have seven resolutions for this new year. I am going to monitor the progress on a monthly basis and see where it goes.

Hoping 2004 brings lots of fun and joy and makes this world an even better place to live.

Welcome 2004.